Various socket magazines are known. They use a variety of mechanisms to retain the nuts in the magazine and to permit the nuts to be inserted into and released from the magazine. Some of these mechanisms may be expensive to manufacture or difficult to use or maintain.
The present invention provides a socket magazine that uses a very simple retaining mechanism for retaining the nuts in the magazine. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a tubular body, with an internal profile having flat portions that match the shape of the nuts, is used to store the nuts. An axially oriented spring inside the tubular body biases a washer toward an open end of the tubular body to push the nuts toward the open end. An O-ring lies recessed into an internal circumferential notch on the tubular body, close to the open end of the tubular body. The inside circumference of the O-ring is just large enough to permit the nuts to squeeze past the O-ring by pressing the O-ring against the circumferential notch when the nuts are being installed or removed, but the O-ring retains the nuts under other circumstances, so they do not accidentally fall out of the magazine.
To use the magazine, the open end is inserted over a first nut to be removed, and some type of drive, such as a socket wrench, is attached to the other end of the magazine. The nut engages the inner surface of the magazine. The drive is used to rotate the magazine about its longitudinal axis, unthreading the nut from its corresponding stud until the nut is fully removed from the stud. The magazine is then relocated and is inserted over a second nut. The second nut pushes the first nut past the O-ring and into the storage magazine, where it pushes against the washer. The biasing spring pushes the washer against the first nut, so that this first nut is caught between the washer and the O-ring. The second nut is removed in the same manner as the first. This procedure is repeated for as many nuts as desired, or until the magazine is full, and all the nuts which are removed are stored in a neatly stacked fashion, inside the magazine.
When it is time to install the nuts on their respective bolts or studs, the loaded magazine is placed over a first stud, pressing the magazine toward the stud until the threads of the stud engage the threads of the outermost nut in the magazine. The driver is used to rotate the magazine about its longitudinal axis so as to tighten the nut onto the stud. As the nut is tightened onto its stud, it is drawn out of the magazine, squeezing past the retaining O-ring. The remaining nuts remain in the magazine, held back by the O-ring, until another stud engages the next outermost nut. If the stud is long enough that it begins to engage a second nut after it has engaged a first nut, it may be desirable to use the magazine first to begin threading each nut onto its respective stud, and, once the magazine is empty, to go back and tighten each nut onto its stud, or to use a different socket to finish tightening the nuts onto their studs. Once the threads of a nut begin to engage the threads of a stud, the magazine may be pulled away from the stud, and the nut will pull out of the magazine past the retaining O-ring.